JWST Probes Feedback in Emerging extrAgalactic Star clusTers: The JWST-FEAST project

In the era of large galaxy surveys and super computers we have now the means to probe and simulate galaxy assembly and evolution with increasingly detailed models. However, star formation and stellar feedback processes within galaxies, remain highly unexplored.

The greatest challenge we face is to build a coherent picture of the interplay between these two processes, happening at parsec scales within galaxies, and the impact that they have in the star-formation cycle at galactic scales.

The advent of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will initiate a new era of explorations and will enable us to investigate star formation within galaxies at wavelength ranges and spatial resolutions that have remained inaccessible until now.

As principal investigator of the approved cycle1 JWST-FEAST project, I have designed and planned a near and mid-infrared (NIR and MIR) multiwavelength survey of local star-forming galaxies.

For the first time, we will be able to break away from our own galaxy and we will be able to observe the emerging phase of star formation in a much wider sample of galaxies, better representative of the star-forming spectrum accessible in the local universe.

The goal of the FEAST survey is to study the key, yet poorly understood, emergence phase, i.e. the critical process that will clear away the leftover gas and dust of the stellar nurseries. How long does it take for embedded star clusters to emerge from their dense gas nurseries? Are these time scales changing as a function of the total mass of stars formed or galactic environment?

The answer to these questions holds the key to our understanding of how and what type of stellar feedback (radiative or mechanic) is able to regulate the star formation cycle of evolving galaxies.

These results only accessible with the JWST capabilities, will be a pathfinder and a testbench to inform and constrain theories and numerical simulations of the star formation process.This application aims to obtain funding for a PhD project that will focus on one of the key science goals of the JWST-FEAST survey: establish the emerging timescales of embedded star clusters and the dominant source of stellar feedback responsible for it.

The PhD project is well defined within one of the 3 topical areas coordinated by the JWST-FEAST team and will timely contribute to the work of the team.

The PhD candidate will have the opportunity to work first-hand with JWST data and to network with a large international team.